Thoughts by George Bernard Shaw Quotes in English Quotation

We know now that the soul is the body, and the body the soul. They tell us they are different because they want to persuade us that we can keep our souls if we let them make slaves of our bodies.

Every star has its own orbit; and between it and its nearest neighbor there is not only a powerful attraction but an infinite distance. When the attraction becomes stronger than the distance the two do not embrace: they crash together in ruin.

I dread success. To have succeeded is to have finished one's business on earth, like the male spider, who is killed by the female the moment he has succeeded in his courtship. I like a state of continual becoming, with a goal in front and not behind.

Life on board a pleasure steamer violates every moral and physical condition of healthy life except fresh air. It is a guzzling, lounging, gambling, dog's life. The only alternative to excitement is irritability.

This is the true joy of life: the being used up for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one; being a force of nature instead of a feverish, selfish little clot of ailments and grievances, complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy.

I am of the opinion that my life belongs to the whole community and as long as I live, it is my privilege to do for it whatever I can. I want to be thoroughly used up when I die, for the harder I work the more I live.

You See, really and truly, apart from things anyone can pick up (the dressing and the proper way of speaking, and so on), the difference between a lady and a flower girl is not how she behaves, but how she's treated.

Bernard Shaw Thought in English

The golden rule is that there are no golden rules.

I feel nothing but the accursed happiness I have dreaded all my life long: the happiness that comes as life goes, the happiness of yielding and dreaming instead of resisting and doing, the sweetness of the fruit that is going rotten.

Nothing is worth doing unless the consequences may be serious.

Get married, but never to a man who is home all day.

It is most unwise for people in love to marry.

The road to ignorance is paved with good editors.

Greatness is only one of the sensations of littleness.

Common people do not pray; they only beg.

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Common sense is instinct. Enough of it is genius.

Reminiscences make one feel so deliciously aged and sad.

The art of government is the organisation of idolatry.

I try to follow his example, not to imitate him.

There is no sincerer love than the love of food.

I do not know what I think until I write it.

Hell is full of musical amateurs.

The devil is not so black as he is painted.

If you injure your neighbour, better not do it by halves.

If women were as fastidious as men, morally or physically, there would be an end of the race.

Bernard Shaw Quotes

The secret to success is to offend the greatest number of people.

She had lost the art of conversation but not, unfortunately, the power of speech.

Forgive him, for he believes that the customs of his tribe are the laws of nature!

When a lion meets another with a louder roar the first lion thinks the last a bore.

A lifetime of happiness! No man alive could bear it; it would be hell on earth.

Man is the only animal of which I am thoroughly and cravenly afraid of.

There is nothing more dangerous than the conscience of a bigot.

From a very early age, I've had to interrupt my education to go to school.

Peace is not only better than war, but infinitely more arduous.

Syllables govern the world.

Poverty doesn't bring unhappiness; it brings degradation.

If there was nothing wrong in the world there wouldn't be anything for us to do.

The secret of forgiving everything is to understand nothing.

The real moment of success is not the moment apparent to the crowd.

A miracle, my friend, is an event which creates faith.

Kings are not born: they are made by artificial hallucination.

Patriotism is a pernicious, psychopathic form of idiocy.

An Englishman thinks he is moral when he is only uncomfortable.

People get nothing out of books but what they bring to them.

You cannot be a hero without being a coward.

I began as a passion and ended as a habit, like all husbands.

Decency cannot be discussed without indecency!

No question is so difficult to answer as that which the answer is obvious.

I have my own soul. My own spark of divine fire.

I assume that to prevent illness in later life, you should never have been born at all.

Cruelty would be delicious if one could only find some sort of cruelty that didn’t really hurt.

Of all the anti-social vested interests the worst is the vested interest in ill-health.

Greatness is one of the sensations of littleness.

Science becomes dangerous only when it imagines that it has reached its goal.

He never does a proper thing without giving an improper reason for it.

There is no satisfaction in hanging a man who does not object to it.

Those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything.

Animals are my friends...and I don't eat my friends.

I often quote myself. It adds spice to my conversation.

Youth is wasted on the young.

If God lived on earth, people would break his windows.

The quality of a play is the quality of its ideas.

There is no love sincerer than the love of food.

Bear it like a man, even if you feel it like an ass.

I want to be all used up when I die.

Man can climb to the highest summits, but he cannot dwell there long.

Loyalty in a critic is corruption.

Morals are a luxury of the rich.

Self-sacrifice enables us to sacrifice other people without blushing.

Oh, well, if you want original conversations, you'd better go and talk to yourself.

The best place to find God is in a garden. You can dig for him there.

A happy family is but an earlier heaven.

Beware of false knowledge; it is more dangerous than ignorance.

Silence is the most perfect expression of scorn.

We are all savages.

The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place.

If you can’t appreciate what you’ve got, you’d better get what you can appreciate.

Animals are my friends... and I don't eat my friends.

Statistics show that of those who contract the habit of eating, very few survive.

I am enclosing two tickets to the first night of my new play; bring a friend ... if you have one.

Cannot possibly attend first night; will attend second, if there is one.

Doing what needs to be done may not make you happy, but it will make you great.

Getting over an unfavorable impression is ever so much easier than living up to an ideal.

People who say it cannot be done, should not interrupt those who are doing it.

A gentleman is one who puts more into the world than he takes out.

A learned man is an idler who kills time by study.

My reputation grew with every failure.

Just do what must be done. This may not be happiness, but it is greatness.

Reading made Don Quixote a gentleman. Believing what he read made him mad.

A government that robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul.

Great Britain and the United States are nations separated by a common language.

Home life is no more natural to us than a cage is natural to a cockatoo.

I have defined the hundred per cent American as ninety-nine per cent an idiot.

Happy is the man who can make a living by his hobby.

It is the mark of a truly intelligent person to be moved by statistics.

A happy familiy is but an earlier heaven.

Only Lawyers and mental defectives are automatically exempt for jury duty.

The best place to seek God is in a garden. You can dig for him there.

Youth is a wonderful thing. What a crime to waste it on children.

Love is a gross exaggeration of the difference between one person and everybody else.

Bernard Shaw Quotes in English

Imagination is the beginning of creation.

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Don’t wait for the right opportunity: create it.

Most people do not pray; they only beg.

People who say it cannot be done should not interrupt those who are doing it.

The goal of an artist is to create the definitive work that cannot be surpassed.

Life is not meant to be easy my child, but take courage: it can be delightful.

He who can, does. He who cannot, teaches.

Life does not cease to be funny when people die any more than it ceases to be serious when people laugh.

Beware of false knowledge, it is more dangerous than ignorance.

Success does not consist in never making mistakes but in never making the same one a second time.

A life spent making mistakes is not only more honorable but more useful than a life spent doing nothing.

Life isn't about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself.

We don’t stop playing because we grow old; we grow old because we stop playing.

I know of only one duty, and that is to love.

You use a glass mirror to see your face; you use works of art to see your soul.

In heaven an angel is no one in particular.

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Nobody could stand an eternity of Heaven.

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Make it a rule never to give a child a book you would not read yourself.

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We have no more right to consume happiness without producing it than to consume wealth without producing it.

A life spent making mistakes is not only more honorable, but more useful than a life spent doing nothing.

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Without art, the crudeness of reality would make the world unbearable.

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Democracy substitutes election by the incompetent many for appointment by the corrupt few.

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You see things; you say, 'Why?' But I dream things that never were; and I say 'Why not?

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If you want to tell people the truth, make them laugh, otherwise they'll kill you.

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To be fool enough to believe a ramping, stamping, thumping lie: that is what you call sincerity!

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An epoch is but a swing of the pendullum; and each generation thinks the world is progressing because it is always moving.

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Never waste jealousy on a real man: it is the imaginary man that supplants us all in the long run.

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If history repeats itself, and the unexpected always happens, how incapable must Man be of learning from experience.

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Choose silence of all virtues, for by it you hear other men's imperfections, and conceal your own.

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Two things define you: Your patience when you have nothing and your attitude when you have everything.

The difference between a lady and a flower girl is not how she behaves, but how she’s treated.

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A genius can't be forced; nor can you make an ape an alderman.

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A book is like a child: it is easier to bring it into the world than to control it when it is launched there.

You know you can't be a nice girl inside if you're a dirty slut outside.

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Clever and attractive women do not want to vote; they are willing to let men govern as long as they govern men.

The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it.

You'll never have a quiet world till you knock the patriotism out of the human race.

There are two tragedies in life. One is to lose your heart's desire. The other is to gain it.

Do not do unto others as you would that they should do unto you. Their tastes may not be the same.

If women were particular about men's characters, they would never get married at all.

I choose not to make a graveyard of my body for the rotting corpses of dead animals.

If you cannot get rid of the family skeleton, you may as well make it dance.

A photographer is like a cod, which produces a million eggs in order that one may reach maturity.

She has mischievious moments when she wishes she could get him alone on a desert island...

I'm not a teacher: only a fellow traveler of whom you asked the way. I pointed ahead - ahead of myself as well as you.

While we ourselves are the living graves of murdered beasts, how can we expect any ideal conditions on this earth?

The British and Americans are two people separated by a common language.

A fashion is nothing but an induced epidemic.

If you begin by sacrificing yourself to those you love, you will end by hating those to whom you have sacrificed yourself.

In an ugly and unhappy world the richest man can purchase nothing but ugliness and unhappiness.

The liar's punishment is, not in the least that he is not believed, but that he cannot believe anyone else.

My method is to take the utmost trouble to find the right thing to say, and then to say it with the utmost levity.

The trouble with her is that she lacks the power of conversation but not the power of speech.

Baseball has the great advantage over cricket of being sooner ended.

Never wrestle with pigs. You both get dirty and the pig likes it.

No man ever believes that the Bible means what it says: He is always convinced that it says what he means.

When a stupid man is doing something he is ashamed of, he always declares that it is his duty.

Your heart and your mouth wil be in two separate parts of your body if you again forget in whose presence you stand.

As long as I have a want, I have a reason for living. Satisfaction is death.

You'll never have a quiet world till you knock the patriotism out of the human race.

In a battle all you need to make you fight is a little hot blood and the knowledge that it's more dangerous to lose than to win.

Liquor is the chloroform which enables the poor man to endure the painful operation of living.

Custom will reconcile people to any atrocity, and fashion will drive them to acquire any custom.

Life is a disease; and the only difference between one another is the stage of the disease at which he lives.

Why should we take advice on sex from the pope? If he knows anything about it, he shouldn't!

Like all young men, you greatly exaggerate the difference between one young woman and another.

The English are not a very spiritual people, so they invented cricket to give them some idea of eternity.

Use your health, even to the point of wearing it out. That is what it is for. Spend all you have before you die; do not outlive yourself.

There is no magic in marriage. If there were, married couples would never desire to seperate. But they do.

In literature the ambition of the novice is to acquire the literary language; the struggle of the adept is to get rid of it.

Power does not corrupt men; fools, however, if they get into a position of power, corrupt power.

My father must have had some elementary education for he could read and write and keep accounts inaccurately.

Patriotism is, fundamentally, a conviction that a particular country is the best in the world because you were born in it....

Censorship ends in logical completeness when nobody is allowed to read any books except the books that nobody can read.

The truth sticks in our throats with all the sauces it is served with: it will never go down until we take it without any sauce at all.

The only service a friend can really render is to keep up your courage by holding up to you a mirror in which you can see a noble image of yourself.

My main reason for adopting literature as a profession was that, as the author is never seen by his clients, he need not dress respectably.

The most distinguished persons become more revolutionary as they grow older.

Don't think you can frighten me by telling me that I am alone. France is alone. God is alone. And the loneliness of God is His strength.

Wilde's permanent celebrity belongs to literature, and only his transient notoriety to police news.

As well consult a butcher on the value of vegetarianism as a doctor on the worth of vaccination.

You see things; and you say “Why?” But I dream things that never were; and I say “Why not?

Do not waste your time on Social Questions. What is the matter with the poor is Poverty; what is the matter with the rich is Uselessness.

You use a glass mirror to see your face; you use works of art to see your soul.

One man that has a mind and knows it can always beat ten men who haven't and don't.

He knows nothing; and he thinks he knows everything. That points clearly to a political career.

We don't stop playing because we grow old; we grow old because we stop playing.

Democracy is a device that ensures we shall be governed no better than we deserve.

Every man over forty is a scoundrel.

For of course if nobody agrees with you, how are you to know you're not a fool?

The price of ability does not depend on merit, but on supply and demand.

People who say it cannot be done should not interrupt those who are doing it.

The lack of money is the root of all evil.

What you are to do without me I cannot imagine.

If all the economists were laid end to end, they'd never reach a conclusion.

Men are wise in proportion, not to their experience, but to their capacity for experience.

You have learnt something. That always feels at first as if you have lost something.

A pessimist is a man who thinks everybody is as nasty as himself, and hates them for it.

Imitation is not just the sincerest form of flattery - it's the sincerest form of learning.

Beauty is all very well at first sight; but who ever looks at it when it has been in the house three days?

I can forgive Alfred Nobel for having invented dynamite, but only a fiend in human form could have invented the Nobel Prize.

If you must hold yourself up to your children as an object lesson, hold yourself up as a warning and not an example.

There are those who look at things the way they are and ask why... I dream of things that never were, and ask why not?

Extermination must be put on a scientific basis if it is ever to be carried out humanely and apologetically as well as thoroughly.

Science is always simple and profound. It is only half truths that are dangerous.

A little learning is a dangerous thing, but we must take that risk because a little is as much as our biggest heads can hold.

We learn from experience that men never learn anything from experience.

Any man over forty is a scoundrel.

It shows how dangerous it is to be too good.

Progress is impossible without change, and those who cannot change their minds, cannot change anything.

When I was young, I observed that nine out of ten things I did were failures. So I did ten times more work.

Eliza has no use for the foolish romantic tradition that all women love to be mastered, if not actually bullied and beaten.

I hear you say 'Why?' Always 'Why?' You see things; and you say 'Why?' But I dream things that never were; and I say 'Why not?

If we desire a certain type of civilisation and culture we must exterminate the sort of people who do not fit into it.

German and Spanish are accessible to foreigners: English is not accessible even to Englishmen.

There are no secrets better kept than the secrets that everybody guesses.

Bad theaters are as mischievous as bad schools.

First love is only a little foolishness and a lot of curiosity: no really self-respecting woman would take advantage of it.

We want a few mad people now. See where the sane ones have landed us!

The play was a great success, but audience was a dismal failure.

We shall never be able to keep the secret unless everybody knows what it is.

After all, the wrong road always leads somewhere.

What man really wishes to do he will find a means of doing.

The 100% American is 99% idiot.

Life is a flame that is always burning itself out, but it catches fire again every time a child is born.

The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those who haven't got it.

We should all be obliged to appear before a board every five years and justify our existence...on pain of liquidation.

When a thing is funny, search it for a hidden truth.

The English are not very spiritual people, so they invented cricket to give them some idea of eternity

If women were particular about men’s characters, they would never get married at all.

Beauty is all very well at first sight; but who looks at it when it has been in the house three days?

Except during the nine months before he draws his first breath, no man manages his affairs as well as a tree does.

If you are going to let the fear of poverty govern your life, your reward will be that you will eat, but you will not live.

The thought of two thousand people crunching celery at the same time horrified me.

I would like to take you seriously, but to do so would be an affront to your intelligence.

The power of accurate observation is frequently called cynicism by those who don't have it.

Build a system that even a fool can use, and only a fool will want to use it.

Which painting in the National Gallery would I save if there was a fire? The one nearest the door of course.

It is dangerous to be sincere unless you are also stupid.

The minority is sometimes right; the majority always wrong.

Under exciting circumstances, wealth cannot be enjoyed without dishonor, or foregone without misery.

The faults of the burglar are the qualities of the financier.

Life is not meant to be easy, my child; but take courage -- it can be delightful.

If you leave the smallest corner of your head vacant for a moment, other people's opinions will rush in from all quarters.

We know there is intention and purpose in the universe, because there is intention and purpose in us.

Those who can do, those who can't teach.

Government is not every body's job. It is a highly skilled vocation.

I am a gentleman: I live by robbing the poor.

My way of joking is telling the truth; that is the funniest joke in the world.

Civilized society is one huge bourgeoisie: no nobleman dares now shock his greengrocer.

Always let your flattery be seen through for what really flatters a man is that you think him worth flattering.

Must then a Christ perish in torment in every age to save those that have no imagination?

Put an Irishman on the spit and you can always get another Irishman to turn him.

Even the youngest of us may be wrong sometimes.

Better keep yourself clean and bright. You are the window through which you must see the world.

I am sick of reasonable people: they see all the reasons for being lazy and doing nothing.

Gentle Jesus, meek and mild' is a snivelling modern invention, with no warrant in the gospels.

Do not try to live forever. You will not succeed.

No man who is occupied in doing a very difficult thing, and doing it very well, ever loses his self-respect.

The worst sin towards our fellow creatures is not to hate them, but to be indifferent to them. That's the essence of inhumanity.

Hatred is the coward's revenge for being intimidated.

I showed my appreciation of my native land in the usual Irish way: by getting out of it as soon as I possibly could.

Youth, which is forgiven everything, forgives itself nothing: age, which forgives itself everything, is forgiven nothing.

You see things; and you say, 'Why?' But I dream things that never were; and I say, 'Why not?'

He who has never hoped can never despair.

The possibilities are numerous once we decide to act and not react.

If the announcer can produce the impression that he is a gentlemen, he may pronounce as he pleases.

Dancing is a perpendicular expression of a horizontal desire.

My way of joking is to tell the truth. It's the funniest joke in the world.

Make it a rule never to give a child a book you wouldn't read yourself.

Only in books has mankind known perfect truth, love and beauty.

The best way to get your point across is to entertain.

A solider always assumes that he is going to shoot, not to be shot.

I’m an atheist and I thank God for it.

Very few people can afford to be poor.

My reputation grows with every failure.

An asylum for the sane would be empty in America.

I never thought much of the courage of a lion tamer. Inside the cage he is at least safe from people.

At present there is not a single credible established religion in the world.

There are scores of thousands of human insects who are ready at a moment's notice to reveal the Will of God on every possible subject.

Assassination is the extreme form of censorship.

No question is so difficult to answer as that to which the answer is obvious.

You don't stop laughing when you grow old, you grow old when you stop laughing.

It is quite useless to declare that all men are born free if you deny that they are born good.

Do not do unto others as you expect they should do unto you. Their tastes may not be the same.

Absolute honesty is as absurd an abstraction as an absolute temperature or an absolute value.

I want to be thoroughly used up when I die for the harder I work the more I live. I rejoice in life for its own sake.

If any religion had a chance of ruling over England, nay Europe within the next hundred years, it could be Islam.

Imagination is the beginning of creation. You imagine what you desire...

This creative man, who in his own selfish affairs is a coward to the backbone, will fight for an idea like a hero.

Few of us have vitality enough to make any of our instincts imperious.

You will never have a quiet world until you knock the patriotism out of the human race.

You see things and you say, Why? But I dream things that never were and say, Why not?

Every person who has mastered a profession is a skeptic concerning it.

There is nothing that can be changed more completely than human nature when the job is taken in hand early enough.

Liberty means responsibility. That is why most men dread it.

I can do without anybody. I have my own soul: my own spark of divine fire.

We have no more right to consume happiness without producing it than to consume wealth without producing it.

I want to be thoroughly used up when I die, for the harder I work the more I live. I rejoice in life for its own sake.

Though all society is founded on intolerance, all improvement is founded on tolerance.

Most people do not pray; they only beg.

Science... never solves a problem without creating ten more.

A genius is a person who is seeing further and probing deeper than other people has a different set of ethical valuations from their and has energy enough to give effect to this extra vision and its valuations in whatever manner best suits his or her

The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man.

The heretic is always better dead. And mortal eyes cannot distinguish the saint from the heretic.

I have to live for others and not for myself; that's middle class morality.

Indifference is the essence of inhumanity.

Golf is typical capitalist lunacy.

What we want is to see the child in pursuit of knowledge, and not knowledge in pursuit of the child.

Criminals do not die by the hands of the law. They die by the hands of other men.

I like flowers, I also like children, but I do not chop their heads off and keep them in bowls of water around the house.

The love of economy is the root of all virtue.

Imagination is the beginning of creation. You imagine what you desire; you will what you imagine; and at last you create what you will.

If all the economists were laid end to end, they would not reach a conclusion.

The truth is, hardly any of us have ethical energy enough for more than one really inflexible point of honor.

I don't know if there are men on the moon, but if there are they must be using the earth as their lunatic asylum.

Some men see things as they are and ask why. Others dream things that never were and ask why not.

It is positively because he is quick-witted that he is long-winded.

Beware of false knowledge, it is more dangers than ignorance.

Oh, the tiger will love you. There is no sincerer love than the love of food.

People become attached to their burdens sometimes more than the burdens are attached to them.

If other people are going to talk, conversation becomes impossible.

Youth is such a wonderful thing. What a crime to waste it on children.

A drama critic is a man who leaves no turn unstoned.

I dislike feeling at home when I am abroad.

We must always think about things, and we must think about things as they are, not as they are said to be.

Englishmen hate Liberty and Equality too much to understand them. But every Englishman loves a pedigree.

It is all that the young can do for the old, to shock them and keep them up to date.

Hegel was right when he said that we learn from history that man can never learn anything from history.

It is the tame elephants who enjoy capturing the wild ones.

You don't get tired of muffins. But you don't find inspiration in them

The novelties of one generation are only the resuscitated fashions of the generation before last.

The world is populated in the main by people who should not exist

The natural term of the affection of the human animal for its offspring is six years.

Virtue is insufficient temptation.

Morality can go to its father the devil.

Progress is impossible without change; and those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything.

Cruelty would be delicious if one could only find some sort of cruelty that didn't really hurt.

Do not love your neighbour as yourself. If you are on good terms with yourself it is an impertinence; if on bad, an injury.

Some men see things as they are, and say, why; I dream things as they never were, and say, why not.

Some donkeys have amazing luck.

The ultimate form of censorship is assassination.

The man who writes about himself and his own time is the only man who writes about all people and about all time.

If more than ten percent of the population likes a painting it should be burned, for it must be bad.

The things most people want to know about are usually none of their business.

The only way for a woman to provide for herself decently is for her to be good to some man that can afford to be good to her.

We don't bother much about dress and manners in England, because as a nation we don't dress well and we've no manners

Do not waste your time on Social Questions. What is the matter with the poor is Poverty what is the matter with the rich is Uselessness.

The people who get on in this world are the people who get up and look for the circumstances they want, and, if they can't find them, make them.

Reasonable people adapt themselves to the world. Unreasonable people attempt to adapt the world to themselves. All progress, therefore, depends on unreasonable people.

A man never tells you anything until you contradict him.

All problems are finally scientific problems.

Censorship ends in logical completeness when nobody is allowed to read any books except the books nobody reads.

Those who do not know how to live must make a merit of dying.

Men have to do some awfully mean things to keep up their respectability.

Ladies and gentleman are permitted to have friends in the kennel, but not in the kitchen.

The most tragic thing in the world is a man of genius who is not a man of honor.

In order to fully realize how bad a popular play can be, it is necessary to see it twice.

I never resist temptation because I have found that things that are bad for me do not tempt me.

No, really: I can't fight, I never could. I can't bring myself to dislike anyone enough.

If you teach a man anything, he will never learn.

The surest way to ruin a man who doesn't know how to handle money is to give him some.

I never resist temptation, because I have found that things that are bad for me do not tempt me.

Wise kings wear shabby clothes, and leave the gold lace to the drum major.

All professions are conspiracies against the laity.

We have not lost faith, but we have transferred it from God to the medical profession.

Better keep yourself clean and bright; you are the window through which you must see the world.

When a man wants to murder a tiger he calls it sport; when a tiger wants to murder him he calls it ferocity.

The man who writes about himself and his own time is the only man who writes about all people and all time.

Besides, do any of us understand what we are doing? If we did, would we ever do it?

I'm willing to tell you. I'm wanting to tell you. I'm waiting to tell you.

General consultant to mankind.

Human beings are the only animals of which I am thoroughly and cravenly afraid.

When a thing is funny, search it carefully for a hidden truth.

Life is not meant to be easy, my child; but take courage: it can be delightful.

The only secrets are the secrets that keep themselves.

The more things a man is ashamed of, the more respectable he is.

The man who listens to Reason is lost: Reason enslaves all whose minds are not strong enough to master her.

We don't stop playing because we grow old - we grow old because we stop playing.

Animals are my friends, and I don't eat my friends.

The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.

The slave of fear: the worst of slaveries

Never fret for an only son, the idea of failure will never occur to him.

When I was young I observed that nine out of every ten things I did were failures, so I did ten times more work.

He who has never hoped can never despair. Caesar, in good or bad fortune, looks his fate in the face.

All great truths begin as blasphemies.

Americans adore me and will go on adoring me until I say something nice about them.

That is what all poets do: they talk to themselves out loud; and the world overhears them.

Galatea never does quite like Pygmalion: his relation to her is too godlike to be altogether agreeable.

Atrocities are not less atrocities when they occur in laboratories and are called medical research.

Bernard Shaw Thoughts

The biggest problem with communication is the illusion that it has been accomplished.

Think of the fierce energy concentrated in an acorn! You bury it in the ground, and it explodes into an oak!

How can she? She's incapable of understanding anything. Besides, do any of us understand what we are doing? If we did, would we ever do it?

Science never solves a problem without creating ten more.

Some look at things that are, and ask why. I dream of things that never were and ask why not?

That is the whole secret of successful fighting. Get your enemy at a disadvantage; and never, on any account, fight him on equal terms.

Save yourself for my sake. And I will go with you to the end of the world.

There are no secrets better kept than the secrets everybody guesses.

A government which robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul.

First love is only a little foolishness and a lot of curiosity.

Fashions, after all, are only induced epidemics.

It's easier to replace a dead man than a good picture.

The government who robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul.

I knew if I waited around long enough something like this would happen.

I don't want to talk grammar. I want to talk like a lady.

Life is like a flame that is always burning itself out...

I care for life, for humanity; and you are a part of it that has come my way and been built into my house. What more can you or anyone ask?

The great advantage of a hotel is that it is a refuge from home life.

She had lost the art of conversation, but not, unfortunately, the power of speech.

Fashions are the only induced epidemics, proving that epidemics can be induced by tradesmen.

Some men dream of things as they are and say; "Why?" I dream of things that never were and say; "Why not?”

The problem with communication…is the illusion that is has been accomplished.

The joy in life is to be used for a purpose. I want to be used up when I die.

If history repeats itself, and the unexpected always happens, how incapable must Man be of learning from experience!

When an apparent miracle happened.it proved divine mission to the credulous, and proved a contract with the devil to the skeptical.

One turns the cheek: the other kisses it. One provides the cash: the other spends it.

Hell is full of musical amateurs: music is the brandy of the damned. May not one lost soul be permitted to abstain?

You cannot have power for good without having power for evil too. Even mother's milk nourishes murderers as well as heroes.

For four wicked centuries the world has dreamed this foolish dream of efficiency; and the end is not yet. But the end will come.

Old men are dangerous: it doesn't matter to them what is going to happen to the world.

Progress is impossible without change and those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything.

Our necessities are few, but our wants are endless.

A man of great common sense and good taste -- meaning thereby a man without originality or moral courage.

This is the true joy in life - being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one.

There is always danger for those who are afraid.

To be in hell is to drift; to be in heaven is to steer.

A man who has no office to go to -- I don't care who he is -- is a trial of which you can have no conception.

How can what an Englishman believes be hearsay? It is a contradiction in terms.

A man's interest in the world is only the overflow from his interest in himself.

We are made wise not by the recollection of our past, but by the responsibility for our future.

Hell, they says, is paved with good intentions.

Every man who records his illusions is providing data for the genuinely scientific psychology which the world still waits for.

The ordinary man is an anarchist. He wants to do as he likes. He may want his neighbour to be governed, but he himself doesn't want to be governed. He is mortally afraid of government officials and policemen.

Imagination is the beginning of creation. You imagine what you desire, you will what you imagine and at last you create what you will.

When you loved me I gave you the whole sun and stars to play with. I gave you eternity in a single moment, strength of the mountains in one clasp of your arms, and the volume of all the seas in one impulse of your soul.

The reasonable man adapts himself to the world: the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.

There are those that look at things the way they are, and ask why? I dream of things that never were, and ask why not?

A man learns to skate by staggering about and making a fool of himself. Indeed he progresses in all things by resolutely making a fool of himself.

We live in an atmosphere of shame. We are ashamed of everything that is real about us; ashamed of ourselves, of our relatives, of our incomes, of our accents, of our opinions, of our experience, just as we are ashamed of our naked skins.

No use slaving for me and then saying you want to be cared for: who cares for a slave? If you come back, come back for the sake of good fellowship; for you’ll get nothing else.

Life is no brief candle to me. It is a sort of splendid torch which I have got a hold of for the moment, and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it on to future generations.

The English have no respect for their language, and will not teach their children to speak it.

Parentage is a very important profession, but no test of fitness for it is ever imposed in the interest of the children.

People are always blaming their circumstances for what they are. I don't believe in circumstances. The people who get on in this world are the people who get up and look for the circumstances they want, and if they can't find them, make them.

When two people are under the influence of the most violent, most insane, most delusive, and most transient of passions, they are required to swear that they will remain in that excited, abnormal, and exhausting condition continuously until death do them part.

Do you think that the things people make fools of themselves about are any less real and true than the things they behave sensibly about? They are more true: they are the only things that are true.

The doctor learns that if he gets ahead of the superstitions of his patients he is a ruined man; and the result is that he instinctively takes care not to get ahead of them.

I appeal to the chemists to discover a humane gas that will kill instantly and painlessly. In short- a gentlemanly gas deadly by all means, but humane, not cruel.

The reason why the continental European is, to the Englishman or American, so surprisingly ignorant of the Bible, is that the authorized English version is a great work of literary art, and the continental versions are comparatively artless.

Every doctor will allow a colleague to decimate a whole countryside sooner than violate the bond of professional etiquette by giving him away.

You know well I couldn't bear to live with a low common man after you two; and it's wicked and cruel of you to insult me by pretending I could.

Few people think more than two or three times a year; I have made an international reputation for myself by thinking once or twice a week.

I have very carefully studied Islam and the life of its Prophet (PBUH). I have done so both as a student of history and as a critic. And I have come to conclusion that Muhammad (PBUH) was indeed a great man and a deliverer and benefactor of mankind which was till then writhing under the most agonising Pain.

This is the true joy in life, the being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one; the being thoroughly worn out before you are thrown on the scrap heap; the being a force of Nature instead of a feverish selfish little clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy.

A Native American elder once described his own inner struggles in this manner: Inside of me there are two dogs. One of the dogs is mean and evil. The other dog is good. The mean dog fights the good dog all the time. When asked which dog wins, he reflected for a moment and replied, The one I feed the most.

The secret of being miserable is to have leisure to bother about whether you are happy or not. The cure for it is occupation, because occupation means pre-occupation; and the pre-occupied person is neither happy nor unhappy, but simply alive and active. That is why it is necessary to happiness that one should be tired.

You came clothed with the virtue of humility; and because God blessed your enterprises accordingly, you have stained yourself with the sin of pride.

Forget about likes and dislikes. They are of no consequence. Just do what must be done. This may not be happiness but it is greatness.

What is the matter with universities is that the students are school children, whereas it is of the very essence of university education that they should be adults.

People exaggerate the value of things they haven't got: everybody worships truth and unselfishness because they have no experience with them

Heaven, as conventionally conceived, is a place so inane, so dull, so useless, so miserable that nobody has ever ventured to describe a whole day in heaven, though plenty of people have described a day at the seaside.

My opportunities were still there, nay, they multiplied tenfold; but the strength and youth to cope with them began to fail, and to need eking out with the shifty cunning of experience

If you have an apple and I have an apple and we exchange these apples then you and I will still each have one apple. But if you have an idea and I have an idea and we exchange these ideas, then each of us will have two ideas.

Remember that you are a human being with a soul and the divine gift of articulate speech: that your native language is the language of Shakespear and Milton and The Bible; and don't sit there crooning like a bilious pigeon.

I have always made you my companions and friends, and allowed you perfect freedom to do and say whatever you liked, so long as you liked what I could approve of.

The solid earth sways like the treacherous sea beneath the feet of men and spirits alike when the innocent are slain in the name of law, and their wrongs are undone by slandering the pure of heart.

Beware of the man who does not return your blow: he neither forgives you nor allows you to forgive yourself.

Man is unique in that he has plans, purpose and goals which require the need for criteria of choice. The need for ethical value is within man whose future may largely be determined by the choice he make.

For now you have only Mahomet and his dupes, and the Maid and her dupes; but what will it be when every girl thinks herself a Joan and every man a Mahomet?

The most striking result of our present system of farming out the national land and capital to private individuals has been the division of society into hostile classes, with large appetites and no dinners at one extreme, and large dinners no appetit.

The people who get on in this world are the people who get up and look for the circumstances they want, and , if they can't find them, make them.

Pasteboard pies and paper flowers are being banished from the stage by the growth of that power of accurate observation which is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it....

The reasonable man adapts himself to the world around him; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.

Money is the most important thing in the world. It represents health, strength, honor, generosity and beauty as conspicuously as the want of it represents illness, weakness, disgrace, meanness and ugliness.

Well, what do they all amount to, these kings and captains and bishops and lawyers and such like? They just leave you in the ditch to bleed to death; and the next thing is, you meet them down there, for all the airs they give themselves.

When the horrors of anarchy force us to set up laws that forbid us to fight and torture one another for sport, we still snatch at every excuse for declaring individuals outside the protection of law and torturing them to our hearts content.

The Sierra is no better than Bloomsbury when once the novelty has worn off. Besides, these mountains make you dream of women—of women with magnificent hair.

If you strike a child, take care that you strike it in anger, even at the risk of maiming it for life. A blow in cold blood neither can nor should be forgiven.

A child hasn't a grown-up person's appetite for affection. A little of it goes a long way with them; and they like a good imitation of it better than the real thing, as every nurse knows.

The people who get on in this world are the people who get up and look for the circumstances they want and if they can't find them, make them.

If Pygmalion is not good enough for your friends with its own verbal music, their talent must be altogether extraordinary.

Life is no brief candle to me. It is a sort of splendid torch which I have got a hold of for the moment, and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it onto future generations.

What we call education and culture is for the most part nothing but the substitution of reading for experience, of literature for life, of the obsolete fictitious for the contemporary real.

People are always blaming their circumstances for what they are. The people who get on in this world are they who get up and look for the circumstances they want, and, if they can't find them, make them.

He didn't dare to, because his father had a weak heart and habitually threatened to drop dead if anybody hurt his feelings. You may have noticed that people with weak hearts are the tyrants of English married life.

The Indian way of life provides the vision of the natural, real way of life. We veil ourselves with unnatural masks. On the face of India are the tender expressions which carry the mark of the Creator's hand. In the face of an Indian, you can see the natural glory of life, while we have covered ourselves with an artificial cloak.

A tragic situation exists precisely when virtue does NOT triumph but when it is still felt that man is nobler than the forces which destroy him.

Both optimists and pessimists contribute to society. The optimist invents the aeroplane, the pessimist the parachute.

Life at its noblest leaves mere happiness far behind; and indeed cannot endure it. Happiness is not the object of life: life has no object. It is an end in itself; and courage consists in the readiness to sacrifice happiness for a more intense qualit.

But I cant stand saying one thing when everyone knows I mean another. Whats the use in such hypocrisy? If people arrange the world that way for women, theres no good pretending it’s arranged the other way...

Few people think more than two or three times a year. I have made an international reputation for myself by thinking once or twice a week.

I tell you that as long as I can conceive something better than myself I cannot be easy unless I am striving to bring it into existence or clearing the way for it.

Men are not governed by justice, but by law or persuasion. When they refuse to be governed by law or persuasion, they have to be governed by force or fraud, or both.

Man gives every reason for his conduct save one, every excuse for his crimes save one, every plea for his safety save one; and that one is his cowardice.

People always get tired of one another. I grow tired of myself whenever I am left alone for ten minutes, and I am certain that I am fonder of myself than anyone can be of another person.

You think, because you have a purpose, Nature must have one. You might as well expect it to have fingers and toes because you do.

I'm glad he's hungry. Not that I want him to suffer, poor chap! But then he'll enjoy eating me much more. There's a cheerful side to everything.

An election is a moral horror, as bad as a battle except for the blood; a mud bath for every soul concerned in it.

I find that socialism is often misunderstood by its least intelligent supporters and opponents to mean simply unrestrained indulgence of our natural propensity to heave bricks at respectable persons.

The only man I know who behaves sensibly is my tailor; he takes my measurements anew each time he sees me. The rest go on with their old measurements and expect me to fit them.

The great secret, Eliza, is not having bad manners or good manners or any other particular sort of manners, but having the same manner for all human souls: in short, behaving as if you were in Heaven, where there are no thirdclass carriages, and one soul is as good as another.

Think of the fierce energy concentrated in an acorn! You bury it in the ground, and it explodes into an oak! Bury a sheep, and nothing happens but decay.

When we want to read of the deeds that are done for love, wither do we turn? To the murder column; and there we are rarely disappointed.

Marriage is to me apostasy, profanation of the sanctuary of my soul, violation of my manhood, sale of my birthright, shameful surrender, ignominious capitulation, acceptance of defeat.

We should find ourselves committed to killing a great many people whom we now leave living, and to leave living a great many people whom we at present kill. We should have to get rid of all ideas about capital punishment.

Physically there is nothing to distinguish human society from the farm-yard except that children are more troublesome and costly than chickens and calves and that men and women are not so completely enslaved as farm stock.

You can always tell an old soldier by the inside of his holsters and cartridge boxes. The young ones carry pistols and cartridges; the old ones, grub.

A part of eugenic politics would finally land us in an extensive use of the lethal chamber. A great many people would have to be put out of existence simply because it wastes other people’s time to look after them.

Reasonable men adapt themselves to the world. Unreasonable men adapt the world to themselves. That´s why all progress depends on unreasonable men.

Weak people want to marry strong people who do not frighten them too much; and this often leads them to make the mistake we describe metaphorically as “biting off more than they can chew.

The seven deadly sins... food, clothing, firing, rent, taxes, respectability and children. Nothing can lift those seven millstones from Man's neck but money; and the spirit cannot soar until the millstones are lifted.

The greatest evils and the worst of crimes is poverty; our first duty, a duty to which every other consideration should be sacrificed, is not to be poor.

The fact that a believer is happier than a skeptic is no more to the point than the fact that a drunken man is happier than a sober one.

Go anywhere in England where there are natural, wholesome, contented, and really nice English people; and what do you always find? That the stables are the real centre of the household. *

You may remember that on earth—though of course we never confessed it—the death of anyone we knew, even those we liked best, was always mingled with a certain satisfaction at being finally done with them.

Old-fashioned people think you can have a soul without money. They think the less money you have, the more soul you have. Young people nowadays know better. A soul is a very expensive thing to keep: much more so than a motor car.

The fact that a believer is happier than a skeptic is no more to the point than the fact that a drunken man is happier than a sober one. The happiness of credulity is a cheap and dangerous quality of happiness, and by no means a necessity of life.

Wicked people means people who have no love: therefore, they have no shame. They have the power to ask love because the don't need it: they have the power to offer it because they have none to give.

You see, we're all savages, more or less. We're supposed to be civilized and cultured - to know all about poetry and philosophy and art and science, and so on; but how many of us know even the meanings of these names?

It is a noteworthy fact that kicking and beating have played so considerable a part in the habits which necessity has imposed on mankind in past ages that the only way of preventing civilized men from beating and kicking their wives is to organize games in which they can kick and beat balls.

All censorships exist to prevent anyone from challenging current conceptions and existing institutions. All progress is initiated by challenging current conceptions, and executed by supplanting existing institutions. Consequently, the first condition of progress is the removal of censorship.

The people who get on in this world are the people who get up and look for the circumstances they want. And if they can't find them, make them.

A nap, my friend, is a brief period of sleep which overtakes superannuated persons when they endeavor to entertain unwelcome visitors or to listen to scientific lectures.

I need not repeat familiar arguments about the waste of teachers' time, and the difficulties thrown in the way of English children trying to learn their own language; or the fact that nobody without a visual memory for words ever succeeds in spelling conventionally, however highly educated he or she may be.

Belief in God meant belief in the old tribal idol called Jehovah; and I would not pretend I did not know whether it existed or not.

It is a curious sensation: the sort of pain that goes mercifully beyond our powers of feeling. When your heart is broken, your boats are burned: nothing matters any more. It is the end of happiness and the beginning of peace.

She has even secret mischievous moments in which she wishes she could get him alone, on a desert island, away from all ties and with nobody else in the world to consider, and just drag him off his pedestal and see him making love like any common man.

I find it easy to forgive the man who invented a devilish instrument like dynamite, but how can one ever forgive the diabolical mind that invented the Nobel Prize in Literature?

Leisure may be defined as free activity, labor as compulsory activity. Leisure does what it likes, labor does what it must, the compulsion being that of Nature, which in these latitudes leaves men no choice between labor and starvation.

The longer I live the more I see that I am never wrong about anything, and that all the pains I have so humbly taken to verify my notions have only wasted my time.

It is this consideration of other people or rather this cowardly fear of them which we call consideration that makes us the sentimental slaves we are. To consider you, as you call it, is to substitute your will for my own. How if it be a baser will than mine?

Christmas is forced upon a reluctant and disgusted nation by the shopkeepers and the press; on its own merits it would wither and shrivel in the fiery breath of universal hatred.

I was a freethinker before I knew how to think.

It is not pleasure that makes life worth living. It is life that makes pleasure worth having.

Experience fails to teach where there is no desire to learn.

A fool's brain digests philosophy into folly, science into superstition, and art into pedantry. Hence University education.

A man of my spiritual intensity does not eat corpses.

The golden rule is that there are no golden rules.

Better never than late.

Few people think more than two or three times a year. I have made an international reputation for myself thinking once or twice a week.

He who can, does; he who cannot, teaches.

A veteran journalist has never had time to think twice before he writes.

It is difficult, if not impossible, for most people to think otherwise than in the fashion of their own period.

The liar's punishment is not in the least that he is not believed, but that he cannot believe anyone else.

The perfect love affair is one which is conducted entirely by post.

Alcohol is the anesthesia by which we endure the operation of life.

All my life affection has been showered upon me, and every forward step I have made has been taken in spite of it.

I am of the opinion that my life belongs to the community and as long as I live it is my privilege to do for it whatever I can.

Confusing monogamy with morality has done more to destroy the conscience of the human race than any other error.

The more I see of the moneyed classes, the more I understand the guillotine.

The longer I live, the more I realize that I am never wrong about anything, and that all the pains I have so humbly taken to verify my notions have only wasted my time!

Marriage is popular because it combines the maximum of temptation with the maximum of opportunity.

Reading made Don Quixote a gentleman, but believing what he read made him mad.

Go anywhere in England where there are natural, wholesome, contented, and really nice English people; and what do you always find? That the stables are the real center of the household.

The American white relegates the black to the rank of shoeshine boy; and he concludes from this that the black is good for nothing but shining shoes.

Everything happens to everybody sooner or later if there is time enough.

An index is a great leveller.

I like a bit of mongrel myself, whether it's a man or a dog.

It is a woman's business to get married as soon as possible, and a man's to keep unmarried as long as he can.

Making Life means making trouble.

She has lost the art of conversation, but not, unfortunately, the power of speech.

What is proposed is nothing but the replacement of the old unintelligent, inevitable, almost unconscious fertility by an intelligently controlled, conscious fertility, and the elimination of the mere voluptuary from the evolutionary process.

The test of a man or woman's breeding is how they behave in a quarrel.

why is it that the people who know how to enjoy themselves never have any money and the people who have money never know how to enjoy themselves?

What is life but a series of inspired follies? The difficulty is to find them to do. Never lose a chance: it doesn't come every day.

The fickleness of the women I love is only equaled by the infernal constancy of the women who love me.

The only way to avoid being miserable is not to have enough leisure to wonder whether you are happy or not.

The heart of an Irishman is nothing but his imagination.

The longer I live, the more I see that I am never wrong about anything, and that all the pains I have so humbly taken to verify my notions have only wasted my time.

He's a man of great common sense and good taste - meaning thereby a man without originality or moral courage.

A thing that nobody believes cannot be proved too often

What is virtue but the Trade Unionism of the married?

Heaven is the most angelically dull place in all creation.

The savage bows down to idols of wood and stone, the civilized man to idols of flesh and blood

There is no subject on which more dangerous nonsense is talked and thought than marriage.

My dear: in this world there is always danger for those who are afraid of it.

Without art the rudeness of reality would make life unbearable.

The only fundamental and possible Socialism is the socialization of the selective breeding of Man: in other terms, of human evolution We must eliminate the Yahoo, or his vote will wreck the commonwealth.

No diet will remove all the fat from your body because the brain is entirely fat. Without a brain, you might look good, but all you could do is run for public office.

I am afraid we must make the world honest before we can honestly say to our children that honesty is the best policy.

A fool’s brain digests philosophy into folly, science into superstition, and art into pedantry. Hence University education.

I say, if you hate cruelty, remember that nothing is so cruel in its consequences as the toleration of heresy!

I sold flowers. I didn't sell myself. Now you've made a lady of me I'm not fit to sell anything else.

George Bernard Shaw Thoughts

I learned long ago, never to wrestle with a pig. You get dirty, and besides, the pig likes it.

Marriage is good enough for the lower classes: they have facilities for desertion that are denied to us.

You can easily find people who are ten times as rich at sixty as they were at twenty; but not one of them will tell you that they are ten times as happy.

What is life but a series of inspired follies? The difficulty is to find them to do. Never lose a chance: it doesn’t come every day.

Two percent of the people think; three percent of the people think they think; and ninety-five percent of the people would rather die than think.

The plain working truth is that it is not only good for people to be shocked occasionally, but absolutely necessary to the progress of society that they should be shocked pretty often.

I finished my first book seventy-six years ago. I offered it to every publisher on the English-speaking earth I had ever heard of. Their refusals were unanimous: and it did not get into print until, fifty years later; publishers would publish anything that had my name on it.

I have never thought much of the courage of a lion tamer. Inside the cage he is at least safe from other men. There is not much harm in a lion. He has no ideals, no religion, no politics, no chivalry, no gentility; in short, no reason for destroying anything that he does not want to eat

My schooling not only failed to teach me what it professed to be teaching, but prevented me from being educated to an extent which infuriates me when I think of all I might have learned at home by myself.

It's so hard to know what to do when one wishes earnestly to do right.

It's a dangerous thing to be married right up to the hilt, like my daughter's husband. The man is at home all day, like a damned soul in hell.

A broken heart is a very pleasant complaint for a man in London if he has a comfortable income.

The true joy in life is to be a force of fortune instead of a feverish, selfish little clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy.

When our relatives are at home, we have to think of all their good points or it would be impossible to endure them. But when they are away, we console ourselves for their absence by dwelling on their vices.

A miracle is an event which creates faith. That is the purpose and nature of miracles. Frauds deceive. An event which creates faith does not deceive: therefore it is not a fraud, but a miracle.

How we lavish our money and worship on Shakespeare without in the least knowing why!

Take care to get what you like or you will be forced to like what you get.

The fickleness of the women I love is only equalled by the infernal constancy of the women who love me.

A man of great common sense and good taste is a man without originality or moral courage.

People do not become great by doing great things. They do great things because they are great.

I can't turn your soul on. Leave me those feelings; and you can take away the voice and the face. They are not you.

The moment we want to believe something, we suddenly see all the arguments for it, and become blind to the arguments against it.

The worst sin toward our fellow creatures is not to hate them, but to be indifferent to them: that's the essence of inhumanity.

The secret of being miserable is to have the leisure to bother about whether you are happy or not.

In literature the ambition of the novice is to acquire the literary language: the struggle of the adept is to get rid of it.

There is only one religion, though there are a hundred versions of it.

I learned long ago, never to wrestle with a pig, you get dirty; and besides, the pig likes it.

Until the men of action clear out the talkers we who have social consciences are at the mercy of those who have none.

The seven deadly sins... food, clothing, firing, rent, taxes,respectability and children. Nothing can lift those seven millstones from man's neck but money; and the spirit cannot soar until the millstones are lifted.

You cannot have qualifications without experience; and you cannot have experience without personal interest and bias. That may not be an ideal arrangement; but it is the way the world is built and we must make the best of it.

Ive taught scores of American millionairesses how to speak English: the best looking women in the world. I’m seasoned. They might as well be blocks of wood. I might as well be a block of wood.

It’s all a matter of habit. There’s no right or wrong in it. Nobody means anything by it. And it’s so quaint, and gives such a smart emphasis to things that are not in themselves very witty. I find the new small talk delightful and quite innocent.

We must be conventional, Jack, or we are so cruelly, so vilely misunderstood. Even you, who are a man, cannot say what you think without being misunderstood and vilified.

The word morality, if we met it in the Bible, would surprise us as much as the word telephone or motor car.

If you can't get rid of the skeleton in your closet, you'd best take it out and teach it to dance.

We are the only real aristocracy in the world: the aristocracy of money.

Independence? That's middle class blasphemy. We are all dependent on one another, every soul of us on earth.

He's a man of great common sense and good taste, meaning thereby a man without originality or moral courage

I shall always be a flower girl to Professor Higgins, because he always treats me as a flower girl, and always will; but I know I can be a lady to you, because you always treat me as a lady, and always will.

At present, intelligent people do not have their children vaccinated, nor does the law now compel them to. The result is not, as the Jennerians prophesied, the extermination of the human race by smallpox; on the contrary, more people are now killed by vaccination than by smallpox.

A movement which is confined to philosophers and honest men can never exercise any real political influence: there are too few of them. Until a movement shows itself capable of spreading among brigands, it can never hope for a political majority.

Whisky is liquid sunshine.

What a man believes may be ascertained, not from his creed, but from the assumptions on which he habitually acts.

Revolutions have never lightened the burden of tyranny: they have only shifted it to another shoulder.

My experience is that one's pleasures don't bear thinking about.

The great difficulty with communication is the illusion it has been accomplished.

The man or woman who feels strong enough for two, seeks for every other quality in a partner than strength.

Nothing is ever done in this world until men are prepared to kill one another if it is not done.

I find that the moment I let a woman make friends with me, she becomes jealous, exacting, suspicious, and a damned nuisance.

You are going to let the fear of poverty govern you life and your reward will be that you will eat, but you will not live.

I tell you I have created this thing out of the squashed cabbage leaves of Covent Garden; and now she pretends to play the fine lady with me.

It is easy - terribly easy - to shake a man's faith in himself. To take advantage of that to break a man's spirit is devil's work.

You must not suppose, because I am a man of letters, that I never tried to earn an honest living.

What we want to see is the child in pursuit of the knowledge not the knowledge in pursuit of the child.

But a lifetime of happiness! No man alive could bear it: it would be hell on earth.

Science is always wrong, it never solves a problem without creating ten more.

Thus, I blush to add, you can not be a philosopher and a good man, though you may be a philosopher and a great one.

The nations morals are like its teeth, the more decayed they are the more it hurts to touch them.

A pessimist thinks everybody is as nasty as himself, and hates them for it.

There is the eternal war between those who are in the world for what they can get out of it... and those who are in the world to make it a better place for everybody to live in.

Set me anything to do as a task, and it is inconceivable the desire I have to do something else.

England and America are two countries separated by the same language.

Get out of my way; for I won't stop for you.

Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all other countries because you were born in it.

The man with a toothache thinks everyone happy whose teeth are sound. The poverty-stricken man makes the same mistake about the rich man.

The problem with communication is the illusion that it has been accomplished.

An Irishman's heart is nothing but his imagination.

Morality is suspecting other people of not being legally married.

If you take too long in deciding what to do with your life, you'll find you've done it.

Only on paper has humanity yet achieved glory, beauty, truth, knowledge, virtue, and abiding love.

It's all that the young can do for the old, to shock them and keep them up to date.

I don’t want to punish anybody, but there are an extraordinary number of people who I might want to kill.

The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those who don't have it.

Give a man health and a course to steer, and he'll never stop to trouble about whether he's happy or not.

The risks of liberty we must let everyone take; but the risks of ignorance and self-helplessness are another matter.

Whenever you wish to do anything against the law, Cicely, always consult a good solicitor first.

The ordinary man is an anarchist. He wants to do as he likes. He may want his neighbor to be governed, but he himself doesn't want to be governed.

When you vote, you only change the names of the cabinet. When you shoot, you pull down governments, inaugurate new epochs, abolish old orders and set up new.

You are going to let the fear of poverty govern your life and your reward will be that you will eat, but you will not live.

What is the use of writing plays, what is the use of writing anything, if there is not a will which finally moulds chaos itself into a race of gods.

There are no perfectly honorable men; but every true man has one main point of honor and a few minor ones.

The greatest fallacy with communication, is the belief that it has actually occurred.

Marriage is an alliance entered into by a man who can't sleep with the window shut, and a woman who can't sleep with the window open.

Style is a sort of melody that comes into my sentences by itself. If a writer says what he has to say as accurately and effectively as he can, his style will take care of itself.

Well, upon my soul! You are not ashamed to stand there and confess yourself a disgusting drunkard.

Virtue consists, not in abstaining from vice, but in not desiring it.

Democracy is a form of government that substitutes election by the incompetent many for appointment by the corrupt few.

Most people go to their grave with their music inside them.

Suppose the world were only one of God's jokes, would you work any the less to make it a good joke instead of a bad one?

The people who get on in this world are the people who get up and look for the circumstances they want, and if they can't find them, make them.

We don't stop playing because we grow old; we grow old because we stop playing.

George Bernard Shaw Thoughts in English

He is a barbarian, and thinks that the customs of his tribe and island are the laws of nature

Though I can make my extravaganzas appear credible, I cannot make the truth appear so.